African Slave Trade - Short Essay

The transatlantic slave trade occupies a special place in the universal history of slavery for many reasons. One of them are the duration of the slave tradery and ofcourse it's massive amount of victims - black men and women and even no mercy for the children. When first mentioned, this subject brings up a horrifying picture of white men torturing and forceing africans to obey their will and to be quite frankly, at first, i was embarrased of my skincolor. But the things aren't that simple. At first, white invaders used straightforward abuction- randomly raiding african villages , killing and hunting black people as it suited their purposes, making africans to fight for their enslavement. But africans wer'ent standing exatly as a one man. Due to the fact that Africa is a big continent, inhabitant tribes had their rivalry and so when powerful tribe leaders raided attacked other tribes and won, they took also slaves sold and traded them for goods. The starting point of slave trading began , when african captives were selled to european colonies. Even when europeans didn't want to buy them, it was no problem for the african tribe leaders because another good bargain was to sell the captives to Arabs, who had trading and keeping slaves for centuries. Like nowadays people did not eager for hard work and the opportunity to get foreign labour became popular. Slaves were used in plantations and for housekeeping etc. When demand for labour increased, English , French and Portugese made a joint declaration where slave-trade was justified when slaves were bought from africans. Europeans builded their forts on the coast for more efficient trading. The message they sent was quite clear- supply us with slaves or we'll take them randomly. And as Basil Davidson has said: "Africa and Europe were jointly involved... Europe dominated the connection, shaped and promoted the slave trade, and continually turned it to European advantage and to African loss".

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